It's Time for the December Issue!
YG's cute Carmel 2 speaker is featured on the new issue's cover and is exhaustively reviewed by John Atkinson inside. But the meat in our December issue is our annual "Products of the Year," where the magazine's writers and editors vote for the products that impressed them the most in the past year. There are some surprises, not the least of which is the great showing made by some very affordable components.
But wait, there's more...
iTrax High-Def Downloads Now Available
Mark Waldrep, the man behind the "only all-HD digital label," Aix Records, has now established an all-HD download site, www.itrax.com. While Music Giants and Linn offer HD downloads, iTrax calls itself "the only website to offer real HD in multiple mixing perspectives," since it offers consumers two-channel stereo, 5.1-channel "audience," and 5.1-channel "stage" perspectives in MP3, Dolby Digital, DTS, WMA pro, WMA Lossless, and PCM 96kHz/24-bit resolutions.
iTubes For Your iPod
There's a basic rule that explains the audiophile's role in the audio food chain: The mass market accepts and then audiophiles perfect. Try to reverse that rule with something like, say, SACD or DVD-Audio, attempting to have sound quality drive mass-market adoption, and you get . . . the DualDisc.
iTunes vs the Listening Room
Stereophile readers are clearly in favorhttp://cgi.stereophile.com/cgi-bin/showvote.cgi?327">favor; of our coveragehttp://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/934/">coverage; of products like Apple's iPod. But judging by some of the comments we receive, they're split on whether it's been a kick in the pants for music lovers or just added to the downward low-rez spiral of digital audio.
iTunes 6.0.2 Is Watching!
Apple's release of its latest version of the iTunes software for Macs on January 10 promised "stability and performance improvements" over the 6.0.1 version already in existence. It also included a new iTunes MiniStore feature that "watches" what you click on your library or playlist and, when you double-click on a selection to play it, changes its display to reflect "matches" you might consider purchasing. This means that iTunes 6.0.2 is sending your now-playing information to an outside server.
iTunes Becomes Seventh Largest Music Retailer
At stereophile.com, John Atkinson, Jon Iverson, and I troll the Internet constantly looking for audio-related news, so on November 21,when I spotted an article by John">http://news.com.com/iTunes+outsells+traditional+music+stores/2100-1027_… Borland about iTunes outselling traditional retail record outlets like Tower and Borders, I passed it on to the other two without even thinking about it.
ITunes Becomes Third Largest Music Retailer
According to market research company NPD Group, in the first quarter of 2007, Apple's iTunes Store has overtaken Amazon.com and Target to become the US's third largest music retailer with 9.8% of all music sales. Apple counts 12 track sales as equivalent to one CD sale, meaning that the company is responsible for nearly 21 million of the quarter's 212 million CD sales.
iTunes Fixes
Last week, we passed along some observations from Benchmark Media Systems' John Siau about iTunes forcing an unnecessary sample-rate">http://stereophile.com/news/120307samplerateconversion/">sample-rate conversion in its 7.5 incarnation. We received a lot of mail on the subject during the week, including some helpful suggestions from Wavelength Audio's Gordon">http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/196rankin">Gordon Rankin, who has much experience designing USB">http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/905listen">USB audio devices.
ITunes Pluses and Minuses?
On May 30, Apple officially launched iTunes Plus, billed as "DRM-free music tracks featuring high-quality 256kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings." The initial material available from the iTunes Plus section of the iTunes Media Store is, for the moment, limited to EMI artists, although other labels have announced pending deals with Apple. The "improved" songs sell for $1.29 rather than the standard 99¢.
iTunes Won't Reach Forecast
Launched with a bang last April, Apple">http://apple.com">Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store has steadily gained popularity with music fans, but it won't reach its projected goal of selling 100 million songs online within its first year.